Amusement park excitement on a Cheapster budget

Hitting the surf of the Little Lehigh rivals a water park, without the expense and the lines

July 30, 2010|%Spencer Soper%

What if we said you could get all the fun of Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom for free, and without all the lines and parking headaches.

You're probably getting pretty excited.

We asked for some tips about keeping the kids busy over the summer without going broke. Carole Ondrovic of Allentown came through with a bunch of ideas that prove she is one bonafide Cheapster. She's a pretty adventurous parent, too, so her children are lucky.

She'll take the kids to the library or even for air conditioned public bus rides. She takes them to the spray fountains outside PPL headquarters on Hamilton Street in downtown Allentown or to nearby Bucky Boyle spray park.

And we especially loved this idea:

"Lehigh Parkway is not just for walking or riding bikes," Carole said. "My kids bring their boogie boards and ride the rapids in the Little Lehigh above the Iron Bridge. A blanket, a few sandwiches or snacks, and you have a full afternoon."

We checked out the Little Lehigh surf one hot day last week and it was great. You can check out a video demo at http://www.mcall.com/onthecheap and see for yourself if it's a Dorney Park for Cheapsters. We were a little nervous at first since one of our colleagues wrote a recent story about all the sewage that spills into the Little Lehigh during heavy rains. But then we figured some people at Dorney probably pee in the pools and water rides, especially since the lines are so long. So it all evens out in the end.

Daily admission to Dorney Park is $38 if you buy tickets online. That's nearly $200 for a family of five. The cost of parking, food and the games it's so tough to drag the kids by can easily push that to $300 or more.

So if your family takes a yearly trip to Dorney Park, you can save $300 this year by packing a picnic and hitting the surf at the Little Lehigh. It's a lot more relaxing than fighting the crowds at Dorney. We've seen folks ride the rapids at Monocacy Park in Bethlehem, too, if that's a little closer for you.

We've got one last tip in case your children are running out of reading material.

The Friends of the Whitehall Library are hosting a children's book sale from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at the library, 3700 Mechanicsville Rd., Whitehall.

Friends president Patricia Kaligis wrote in to tell us that most hardcovers go for $1 and paperbacks for a quarter. Most of the books, good for toddlers up through high school, are in "gently used" condition, she said. They're also giving away free coloring books.

"All the money raised goes back to the library to try to fill in the gaps left from loss of state funding," Patricia said.